Tuesday, June 24, 2014

When flowers attack (and a woeful tale)

I've been into big-ass flowers lately -- the bigger the better. These here flowers certainly qualify.

This is the same skirt I've been making, just a touch shorter because the width of the fabric demanded it. I did try a little pocket mod on this skirt, though. I just happened to have a green scrap that matched the green flowers (and what is up with green flowers, anyway?) perfectly. To make the tulip-y shape of the pocket, I simply attached the front pocket with a curved seam instead of simply sewing along the seam line. The back part of the pocket gets sewn as normal, and when they are sewn together you can see the pocket back in the cut-out. The only difficult part is that you cannot press the front pocket seam flat after you attach it to the front skirt piece.

Sad to say, the yoke facing does not match as perfectly as the pocket fabric. A first world problem if there ever was one, I know.

This may be my favorite skirt so far. I know I say that a lot, but that doesn't make it less true! The simple switch-up on the pocket is fun, and I should remember to try stuff like this more often.
I wore this skirt to work last week with The Brown Cardigan of All-Matching-ness. Seriously, I have since been going out of my way to not make garments that match this cardigan, with only partial success.

The skirt has a fairly satisfactory twirl rating, too.

Finally, my tale of woe. My serger ... it sergeth no more. I spent hours on Sunday threading and re-threading, but no luck. I've had it for five years, give or take, and nary a service in all that time, so maybe it's simply on strike. Either way, it's off for an extended vacation at the sewing center tomorrow.

That would leave me sergerless. Or would it?

It's funny how I used to do all my sewing sans serger, and thought nothing of it. Even when I bought the serger, I thought it would be mostly for knits. But now I finish all my seams with it, and the serged edge makes a rolled hem super easy. (I should probably try out the rolled hem setting though ... never crossed my mind before this post!) I didn't like the idea of going back to French seams or unfinished edges, even just for a few weeks.

After 24 hours of pondering a sergerless life (for any duration!) I decided a "backup serger" was in order. Given that I have nine or so "backup" sewing machines, this probably isn't such a surprising conclusion. Anyhow, a Brother 1034D was duly ordered and I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. I don't expect it to replace my original serger (a Janome MyLock 634D ... why do serger numbers end in "D"?). But the Brother seems surprisingly well-loved, given its price, so I am hoping it will be a good stand-in, and maybe could become a dedicated rolled hem machine when the Janome returns home hale and healthy? Once I've used the Brother for a bit I'll try to post some thoughts on how they compare.